Routine administration of vitamin k at birth

[matok]

Greetings to all members of this esteemed forum and thank you in advance for your response(s).

As a medical student and during my residency training, it was routine to administer vitamin k to every newborn.

However, it appears the practice is being abandoned in my part of the world. What is the position in your country

regarding this practice? In addition to your responses, if there are recent material(s) to support the position in your country or locality,

I will be glad to have have them.

Looking forward to hearing from as many members as possible.

Dr Okposio Matthias

Nigeria

[Stefan Johansson]

I guess nothing has changed from a medical point of view, i.e. universal vitamin K prophylaxis is recommended.

There is a relatively new position paper by ESPGHAN, here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27050049

( if you need the paper in full-text, try http://unpaywall.org/  )

[matok]

Thanks  Stefan .

[Dr Hanifah]

Agreed, we still give vit. K to all our newborn in Malaysia.

 

[vijayashankara]

We still use Vitamin K prophylaxis for all our in hospital births. Most of private hospitals and nursing home do follow the recommendation. Home deliveries not attended by a healthcare worker may miss out on this. This is picture in India.

[matok]

Thank you to Drs Hanifah and Vijayashankara for your responses. With these, I can now continue my advocacy for routine administration of vitamin k to all our newborns. There has been an unexpected increased in cases of vitamin k deficiency bleeding (VKDB) in my local hospital which also serves as a referral centre for smaller public and private hospitals and clinics. On further inquiry, it was discovered that routine vitamin k administration was not being done, no reason was given for their non use of vitamin k, some actually think it made no difference with regards to the occurrence of VKDB. The good news though is that progress is being made. Thank you once more for the responses . Dr Okposio, Delta State Nigeria

[vvegamontes1]

En Mexico si utilizamos la Vitamina K rutinariamente, en algunas ocasiones se ha agotado la vitamina k parenteral y vemos casos de Enfermedad hemorragica del recien nacido que practicamente cuando existe no las vemos, por lo que en cierto momento hasta vitamina K oral hemos utilizado....